Millin Ibranov was a fist. Reduce the symbolism and you're left with white knuckles and taut skin, edges and borders. Millin had always been a force that I had in vain tried to unfurl like one does with a fist to shake a person's hand. Yet, he had always had his hand in a fist, had always resisted me.
There were times when we were growing up when he used to be kind to me. His cheeks hallowed in the middle, highlighting his dimples. He used to laugh at my awkward, strained, jokes. He'd had the power to make me soar, to make me feel both invisible and powerful. Millin Ibranov had the kind of charm where he could make outsiders feel like kings by merely flashing them his dimples.
Four years, spanning from the first day back to school after Yuri Karamov's injury, to me having kissed the boy I had sworn that I would never talk to again, I had come face to face with Ibranov a handful of times. Out of those rare occasions, only three stood out in my mind. Millin had looked distinctly different each time.
The most recent was a day in August when the telephone wires in Dronesk were sizzling in the hot air. The asphalt on the roads smelt of tar and petrol. Our first year of high school had just commenced. Eline had begun to worry that I was growing isolated in Ljerumlup, so she sent me off to the post office, on an errand. I agreed under the pretense that I needed some air. I did, but not the one in Dronesk. I was planning on sneaking off to Rujga with the afternoon train and returning in time for supper.
Earlier that summer, my father had opened a bank account in my name. I was financially independent for the first time in my life, which meant I could leave Dronesk whenever I wanted. I couldn't stand my loneliness staring back at me in my darkened bedroom windows. I suspected Eline knew I left town from time to time, but like most things in our household it was one of those things that went unasked and unsaid.
The post office was located in a cluster of buildings downtown which we referred to as the Center. Healthcare clinics stood side by side upscale restaurants and boutiques. The Center was connected by a series of narrow, cobbled streets and tall buildings with decaying art nouveau facades.
I was walking down one of these streets when a motor scooter, parked outside of a family café, caught my eye. There was nothing special about this scooter, other than that my mind connected it to its owner. My steps slowed down to a halt in the middle of the street. The sight of the black and white monster was one that was commonplace downtown, yet I still grew wary. Wherever the scooter was parked was a sure sign of Yuri Karamov's presence.
I drew closer to the café windows, and sure enough, I caught sight of owner's head. I peered closer, but there was no sign of Yuri at the table where Millin was sat. Millin had his back to me, his arm was slung across the backrest of the chair next to him. His buzzcut, and the self-assured manner in which he was lounging marked him out of the twenty or so guests that were spread out around the room.
He threw his head back in laughter, shifted in his seat. The reflective surface of the window dimmed as the sun hid behind a cloud. That's when I first laid eyes on the girl seated next to him. She was smiling in a way that had turned the lining of my stomach inside out. Everything about Adriana was the same as when I had seen her earlier that day. She wore the same black chemise and shades, which now sat perched on top of her head. Yet, it had taken me a second of intent staring to recognise her in her expression.
She tucked her ash-blonde hair behind her ear. I was transfixed by the way she leaned into him. The way that he drew into her in response.
The moment their lips touched was but a speck compared to the feelings that had coursed through me when Millin Ibranov caressed my cousin's cheek. All doubts of her infatuation were crushed. I kept telling myself that there had to be a logical explanation for their encounter. How I wished my eyes were playing tricks on me. But there was no mistaking the way he weaved her into him. The way she hung on his every word.
Before the idea of a kiss had been conceived, he had taken her hand which lay on the table between them and placed a modest peck on her knuckles. Her response had been to giggle. Then followed a public display of indecency that had made me sick to my stomach.
I traced my steps backwards, away from the café windows. I turned on my heel and went straight back home. The back of my throat and tongue were weighted down by disgust which kept refluxing up my oesophagus. My head was buzzing with a thousand unanswered questions. Forgotten over their roar were the government documents which Eline wanted signed.
I was dejected. I was completely crushed under the realisation that I was all alone.
I had no one left, not even my cousin.
I was plagued by memories of encounters that I'd had with Millin as I made my way home. I recalled the time in middle school when he had spat at my feet. Back when the only thing anchoring our friendship had been Yuri's innocent enthusiasm. I still remember the way his face had scrunched up at my consoling words after he had lost a match to the Arash. The way he had growled for me to get out of his face, and before that, how he had called me an Arash slur.
Back in middle school, Millin had had long hair like most of the Flatlanders, but then one summer, he, along with a wave of Brommian had started shaving their heads as an act of resistance. At first, it was a youth movement that was easy to dismissâlike so many of its kind. People didn't get it, especially not the elderly Arash. The sentiments in town were: why would the Brommian mark their kids, if they themselves were always complaining that they had bullseyes on the backs?
The act was seen as attention-seeking, childish. It was even banned in school for a short while before everyone realised that the only way to squash the rebellion was to accept it and to let it wilt in the harsh winter months to come. For the majority of Brommian this would be the case, but for Millin, and a few others, their shaved heads became an identity tied to their cultural heritage.
I'll never forget the Monday back to school after Yuri's thirteenth birthdayâthe way Millin's weight had knocked the breath out of my lungs; the bruises from when he had held me against the door. His acne spotted face and his bloodshot eyes which had stared back at me with such vile hatred. Millin had returned to school that Monday with a black eye and a permanent scowl on his face. His body posture had been a beckon for trouble. I knew I should have been wary of him, but I was too torn by guilt and shame to really care about what he might have attempted to do.
During the break, Millin had sneaked up behind me just as I was about to enter the school building. He pushed me and I stumbled forward. My shoulder hit the double doors, closing them shut on the students before me. Before I had a chance to regain my balance, he turned me around. He held me by the collar of my school jacket and hissed every insult he could grope for between the heavens and the earth. His spit sprinkled my face. His breath wafted, warm and foul, on my cheeks.
For years there had been rumours circulating about Millin's father being an abusive drunk, and for the first time I found myself believing them. What else could have fostered such hatred in his expression?
Millin had always been an angry boy, but had hidden it well. He was notorious for kicking his opponents' chins on the football pitch. If you listened closely to his laughter, it was more of a taunting cackle than a genuine laugh.
I wanted to believe that I was wrong, and that Yuri was right, and that there was more to Millin than a wolf in sheep's clothing. But he was his father's son. He was Haroon's younger brother. He came from the lowest tier of society; a family of coal miners. There was no sign that he would amount to anything. His path might as well have been carved in stone; a high school drop-out like his brother, who would end up in the coal mines in the Primian Valleys, and who would die of one pulmonary disease or the other.
It's comical, if not outright tragical, how these impressions leave a mark at such a young age. How I had no idea what his father looked like, but I knew that he was sickly, and that he was a drunkard, and that Millin's mother was too afraid to leave him.
Deep down the truth that Millin Ibranov was guarding under all that anger was that he was pitiful. And I used it in the only context I knew would hurt and blister long after I had stormed out of his sight because I, too, was my father's son, and I hated being compared to him.
That encounter had taken place four years ago. A day when I was convinced that what Yuri Karamov and I had been could never be restored. I left for school with the promise that I would never speak to him ever again. He was dead to me.
But there I was, four years later, with my stomach rooted to the roof of my mouthâafraid. Not because I had kissed the Yuri, but because I had the feeling Millin Ibranov had been hatching a revenge for what I had said in anger all those years ago. I was afraid that he would rob me of my new-found happiness.